Rose Flower, Red Lotus
by yifahnefliegt
Summary: Nobody believed the rose flower. The red lotus was never open to anyone. But the two siblings only have each other in a dark world of murders and abductions. A science fiction/horror reimagining of the Korean folktale 'Janghwa Hongryeon Jeon'. Inspired by 'Dark Harvest' and 'The Returnening'.


**YOUR FRIENDLY DISCLAIMER:** I don't own both Invader Zim and _Janghwa Hongryeon Jeon_.

 _Once upon a time, an angel gave a father a flower._

 _Then, he was given a beautiful child._

 _He named her Janghwa, rose flower._

 _When he had a second child, he named her Hongryeon, red lotus._

 _Both child were unloved._

 _Janghwa was misunderstood._

 _Nobody listened to her and nobody believed her._

 _One day, Janghwa drowned._

 _Hongryeon followed_.

* * *

A wilted rose was framed and hung in Dib Membrane's bedroom, its brittle stalk and shrivelled leaves forcefully spread wide and nailed to the black board, rotting head dropping limp-an earthly beauty crucified. Remove the glass and fill the room with the dusty, bittersweet odour of rot and decay. Death's signature perfume.

The rose was as old as Dib himself. Professor Bae Yeon-hee gave his father, Professor Membrane the once brilliant red flower during his visit to Incheon around twelve years ago. Yeon-hee was a lovely young woman, the enchanting daughter of elegance and intelligence. She had genetically modified short purple hair that looked perfectly natural on her and a pair of light brown, almost reddish eyes like wet earth. Like a fresh grave.

She was working for the infamous Rosenrot company, specialising in cloning and genetic modifications. The latter evolved into a kind of cosmetic surgery currently most sought-after by idols and ordinary citizens alike in the Land of Morning Calm.

"Cloning is like growing roses." she said in slightly-accented English, "You take a piece of something beautiful to capture its grace before it dies." Yeon-hee folded the flower into Professor Membrane's hands. "Even in death, a part of it lives on, as an another soul in another body. They will have different thoughts, different memories, but the essence is still the same. The same scent, the same beauty, the same red."

She was right.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

That perhaps explained Dib's uncanny resemblance to their father and Gaz's milky skin, small terracotta eyes and single eyelids. Gaz knew, but kept quiet about it.

And there Dib was, sitting on the couch with his laptop on the coffee table, staring at the screen with the same pair of honey-brown eyes behind round glasses. The same clear-cut features, the same unruly jet-black hair, the same pale skin stretching taut over the lines and contours of muscles and bones. The same determined look in their faces.

The rose flower has bloomed.

Dib turned around to face Gaz. Their eyes met, sending a shiver down her spine. As if caught in a suspicious act, she suddenly stopped approaching, standing still with a slice of pizza in her hand.

"Hey, Gaz! Come here! Check this out!" Dib said, pointing ecstatically at his laptop. Gaz never really cared about any of Dib's latest discoveries, but today she felt a faint spark of curiosity in her mind. She broke away from her frozen stance and shuffled closer towards her brother. The screen bathed them in soft blue light. A picture of an UFO and the words 'THEY ARE HERE' greeted Gaz's sight. It was his desktop wallpaper, a testament to his lifelong alien obsession. He's strange child in love with the unknown.

Dib's thin, long fingers glided _en pointe_ over the keyboards, dancing. Gaz watched him type while nibbling at her pepperoni pizza. Sweetness melted into sharp edges, the aftertaste of smoke and fire was freed from flesh and familiar flavours bursted between her lips. But when her teeth slipped from her meal and sank into her tongue, she tasted the stinging tang of spices and copper.

Dib clicked on a camera-shaped icon. A window opened, showing a blurry video footage of a green insectoid creature with a floating glint of silver following it. Zim and his robot minion, GIR. The constant crackles of static in the background pounded into Gaz's head, droning mindlessly, just like the throbbing pain in her tongue. Just the right amount of white noise, strangely calming in comparison to Zim's crazed rants and GIR's metallic squeals.

"Skool's annual physical examination, eh?" Zim said, tapping his chin with a gloved finger. His antennae perked up in interest. "GIR! Fetch me the papers!"

"Ookey-dokey!" little GIR came running to his master, every step marked by a soft squeaking sound. His cross-stitched mouth formed a wide smile when he handed Zim a thick stack of papers. "Here you go~" he sing-songed.

Zim immediately seized the papers from GIR's grip and brought them to his wide magenta eyes. "Hmm-mmm. Authorisation For Physical Examinations." he began his dramatic reading of the papers' contents, "I, as the parent of my _normal hyuu-man baby wormchild_ , Zim, hereby authorise the medical officer to perform all sorts of examinations on my child, including height and weight measurements, endurance tests and intensive organ probings to make sure that he-slash-she is still breathing and functional to slave for school and housechores. If my child's organs are found to be inhumanly strange and-slash-or faulty, the medical officer is given the right to terminate... hmm... seems like RoboDad has to sign this-GIR!" Zim dropped the papers and gawked wide-eyed at his robot assistant, face stricken with horror. "What are you doing?"

"I'm eating!" GIR squealed in delight. He tore a box of cereal open- _special Poop Loops with cherries and dried corn!_ -and poured its contents into a glass bowl-like gadget he found lying on a table. The bowl in question was connected to a socket in the wall. But GIR didn't care. He kept on giggling and humming the cereal ad's addictive jingle. _I got them Poop Loops, I got- I got them Poop Loops-_

"GIR! Don't touch that!" Zim screamed. "That's MY harvester! I'd just repaired it last week!"

"Hamster?" GIR asked while pouring a carton of milk into the 'bowl'. Milk and electronics never mix. Soon, the harvester began to rattle. Its steel-and-glass frame was racked violently with spasms of electric sparks that made it leap off the table. Against Zim's one-man operatic wail of "NOOOO~", the harvester disappeared into a shower of broken glass, brown cereals and dairy rain.

The footage shattered into grains of noise. Silver flecks of light squirmed all over like maggots feasting on a forgotten corpse. The laptop screen was filled with hissing bright static. Beneath them, the last image of Zim and GIR fighting faded to gray, fraying at the edges, festering, decaying. But for Dib, it was his moment of triumph. "See that, Gaz?" he asked, beaming. "I knew that Zim's up to something! I knew it!"

"That's... kind of stupid." said Gaz, her voice colourless.

Dib didn't mind about Gaz's negative response. He was more than happy to have someone to share his updates about Zim's latest evil plan with, because nobody else ever cared to listen. Dib was the unwanted child of the earth. His father never respected him. His Skool friends ridiculed him. Red wounds and bruises blossomed on his skin from the bullying and fighting at Skool; the stigmata of Earth's only saviour. For trying to warn them about an impending alien invasion, he was declared insane. No one wanted to comprehend the gravity of the situation, the weight of his words. Everything he was trying to prove was lost to the wind.

But Gaz was different. She was special. She was the only one who could see through Zim's flimsy schoolboy disguise. The others were blind. When Zim convinced his classmates that his green skin and lack of ears were only a skin condition, they believed him completely. But Gaz wasn't convinced. She was too smart for that. In Dib's eyes Gaz was a lotus flower, born and rooted in the same dark world as the others, but bloomed unsmeared by its stupidity. She was beautiful, enlightened, pure. He couldn't love her more.

For years, Dib has lived his life as an outcast. An outsider. But with his sister by his side, Dib was no longer afraid. He was no longer alone in his fight. One day, when they finally realised that Zim is an alien, they would finally believe him. And he would finally be redeemed.

And Zim's plan to take over the Earth will fail.

Days passed and the audio-visual bug Dib implanted in Zim's secret base had stopped working. The same static plagued the screen, buzzing in his room. Sitting motionless on his chair, Dib had been watching the blank screen for as long as Gaz remembered. He only sat there, waiting.

Gaz was afraid. Afraid that those days would return. Afraid that his butt would be fused to the chair again after days of inactivity-glazed eyes glued to the small box of light, twitching, watching, waiting for Zim, arms lying still, catatonia rendering him fat and smelly and greasy, his room a dark gas chamber, his self a mess. She didn't want this. She didn't want to shove food inside the room with the shoving stick to feed him again.

If he wasn't too preoccupied with Zim, he would've known about the worse things happening recently. In their neighbourhood. Tuesday's news was about a schoolgirl named Matilda who had gone missing. She was Gaz's classmate. Wednesday's news was about Pete, the marathon athlete who had lost his legs overnight. Thursday was about a boy who was left mute after his tongue was cut off. Friday was about a viral picture in shock sites, the image of a young girl with a pair of moist, red holes glaring at the camera. Her eyes had been ripped out of her sockets.

There's a reason why Zita was absent for days.

Still, Gaz didn't want to disturb him. She wasn't as annoying as he was. She shrugged everything off and headed for the stairs, Game Slave 2 in hand.

 _Tap, tap, tap. Screech._

Gaz whirled around, looking at the hallway. Darkness had painted the wall, dulled the corners and swallowed the end, giving it an illusion of an endless corridor. The thought of staring into something that infinite made her dizzy. It was half an hour before midnight. All lights but one above the stairs were on. Against the lone light, her body casted a black silhouette over the brown carpet, a thick long line joining the shadows beyond.

 _Tap, tap, tap. Screech._

There it was again. The strange noise came from Dib's room. The sound of metal tapping lightly on the floor before dragging itself across the smooth surface. It went on and on. Tapping and dragging. Tapping and dragging.

"Dib?"

Her brother didn't reply. He only screamed.

Gaz gritted her teeth. What is he up to this time? Is this one of his stupid games with Zim? At least he was moving again and not turning into a fat ball of smelly... stuff. The thought comforted her. But she couldn't stand the strange noise. The constant tapping was more annoying than his squeaky nasal voice.

She needed to put an end to this.

As soon as Gaz reached Dib's room, she hammered her fist on the door. "Hey, Dib!" she yelled, "Open the door, now!"

She didn't get any replies. Dib screamed again.

Gaz was starting to get impatient. It was too cold outside, the other lights weren't working and his screams were more irritating than the tapping and his talking voice combined. "Okay, fine." she grunted. "If this is what you want."

She twisted the doorknob and shoved the door open.

Gaz couldn't recognise Dib's room anymore. Books, files and clothes were littered everywhere on the floor. The window was completely smashed. Fresh blood were sprayed all over the walls. Dib was lying on the floor, gripping his injured side while Zim loomed over him, propped by the spider legs sprouting from his back PAK.

The green alien was wearing a string of intestines around his neck like an exotic animal scarf.

"My radar says that you have the best brain. And the biggest head. Big and full of organs." Zim began, flashing his zipper-like teeth in a twisted mockery of a smile. "But your head's too big to pass as normal. Your skin is better than your head. I need your skin."

"I won't give it to you that easily, alien scum." Dib sneered defiantly. "You know I never will."

"Maybe this will change your mind. Let me show you how I'll retrieve your skin..." Zim dug into his uniform pocket and pulled out a black rat. "With this perfectly normal hyoo-man specimen!"

"That's a rat, Zim. Not a human-"

"Silence! You dare correct ME?" Zim barked. His worm-like tongue spiralled in front of his lips. The unfortunate rat squirmed and squeaked in his death grip. When Zim snapped the rat's neck, the trapped animal peed on his hand. He grunted in disgust. Using his spear-sharp spider legs, Zim lifted a thin layer of skin from the dead rat's body and snipped it away from its muscles. _Snip, snip, snip._ A smooth, long cut was made from its stomach to its groin before slitting upwards towards its throat.

Then, he tore away the layer of skin from the little replicas of underlying muscles and bones. The skin's inner layer was pink and glistening, lined with branch-like networks of red, forcefully ripped from the body it was supposed to protect. With the stomach entirely naked and exposed, the heavy bundle of digestive organs threatened to fall out of its shrivelled torso, but held back by a frail layer of membrane (and Gaz wondered if the pun was intended). Through the rosy tint of the transparent membrane, they saw everything that should be hidden-the deep crimson liver, the sickly pale intestines and a glimpse of a kidney.

Such plentiful organs.

"Ah, nevermind." said Zim, nonchalantly throwing his finished handiwork away. "All I want to say to you is PREPARE to meet your inescapable doom, filthy human!"

"Call dad." Dib mouthed, eyes jumping back and forth between Zim and his sister. "Please."

"No way." Gaz mouthed back. "I can handle this stupid alien."

"Call dad." Dib glared behind bloodstained glasses. "Now."

Gaz let out a long sigh and quickly went downstairs to fetch their father. But by the moment Professor Membrane arrived at his son's room, the green alien was gone. All that's left was a suspicious-looking Dib in a messy, bloody room. Zim's intestine scarf lay folded in a heap on the boy's lap.

"Are you trying to raise the dead again, son?" he asked. His sonorous voice was harsh, reprimanding.

"No, Dad..." Dib answered shakily. He pointed at the broken window. "It wasn't me... it was _Zim_."

There was no use in explaining. Nobody believed him anyway.

"It's always Zim this, Zim that. You can't blame your mistakes on others, son." Professor Membrane folded his arms across his chest. "You must grow up and learn to take real responsibility for your actions. Especially when it's about-"

He stopped ranting when something small and sticky fell on his head. The professor picked it up by a bony string and scrutinised it for a long time. It was a skinned rat.

"Son, you're grounded." he dictated in a grave tone.

"No, dad! You can't do this to me!" Dib pleaded. "The Earth needs to be saved!"

The professor ignored him completely, muttering the words 'my poor, insane son' that got lost somewhere between the slammed door and Dib's silent sobs.

"You saw everything, right, Gaz?" Dib asked with a piercing stare. A hopeful grin was plastered on his face. He was placing all his hopes on her. "Tell Dad the truth, Gaz, please."

Gaz shrugged and walked out of the room.

* * *

It was 1 in the morning and a rumbling stomach stirred Gaz awake. She dragged her feet on the floorboards and felt her way along the dark corridors, down the stairs and down to the green-lit kitchen.

She opened the refrigerator. There was a carton of milk with Matilda's face on it. The milk was getting sour. A plastic of bologna lay untouched beside it, but she wasn't in the mood for some baloney. She took only what she needed, a can of soda.

Gaz opened the freezer and saw a Bloaty's pizza box. There was a leftover pepperoni pizza in it. Perfect. She took out the pizza and stuffed it in the microwave. Gaz hated the microwave. It reminded her of the fact that her father lied to her. He said that a wrong push of a button could destroy all humanity. She tried, but failed. She still hated him for that.

From the corner of her eyes, Gaz saw that Dib was entering the kitchen, packing some foodstuffs into his black schoolbag. "What are you trying to do?" she asked.

"I'm going to Zim's base." he replied.

Gaz raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you grounded?"

"I'm going to stop Zim no matter what." Dib said. He zipped his bag close and slung it over his shoulders. His body was poised to leave. "Soon, Dad will know that I was right all along."

"Whatever."

The microwave tinged.

"Ah, one more!" Dib turned back and ran towards Gaz with a wide smile. His black trench coat trailed behind him. When Gaz looked up, Dib's eyes were pastel red. The next thing she knew was a pair of lips pressed against her forehead. Cold and brief, like a passing of autumn breeze.

"Love you, Gaz!" he said, pulling away from her face. "Bye!"

After that, Dib was gone.

Gaz placed a hand on her forehead. The kiss burned her skin.

 _Saddened after her father refused to believe her, Janghwa ran away crying into the forest._

* * *

That night, Gaz had a dream.

Soft white light was refracted into something calm and black and reflected into her eyes. The background was white, empty. The emptiness bled all over her, snaking down her back, branching from the curls of her hair and dripping from her fingertips. But there was another colour she saw: black. The black lake mirrored a familiar face, complimenting it with his calmness. Snow-white skin, bible-black hair, blood-red lips. Two moons shining over his faraway eyes.

Dib.

Gaz tried to call out his name, but in the deafening silence and his expressionless face, Gaz had lost her voice. He was speaking soundless words to her too, she knew. His heart was laid bare as the landscape before her, stark black and white and red, sorrowful and picturesque. Looking at him, she saw the portrait of a broken child, pieces of him bound by an apathetic T-shirt and wide smiles.

Something broke through the empty air. Time began to slow down for the both of them, and her every heartbeat was amplified. The atmosphere cracked. A ribbon of smoke drifted into the air, another dash of monochrome solitude gnawing at her bones. Gaz wished that she could scream.

An invisible bullet pierced Dib's chest. His whole body shook, his golden eyes wide, his lips parting. But instead of blood, a shower of rose petals burst out of his wound; silky, red and weightless. The petals flew everywhere before they lay scattered as crimson drops on the white earth.

The fragrance of roses was intoxicating, a strange concoction of sprtingtime's lively soul and bitter love, childhood innocence and dances in the rain-the substance of her memories. Her old memories with Dib.

She had never hated roses this much in her life.

A final sputter of petals from his mouth and Dib fell into the lake without a single splash or sound. His lifeless body was as light as falling petals.

He slipped away into dark waters.

Gaz closed her eyes.

She couldn't bring herself to keep looking. Stupid or not, crazy or not, dream or not, Dib was still her brother. The only friend she had.

But the lake was eerily still, unholy black except for the rose petals floating where the lotuses grow.

* * *

The last scent of roses had faded. Gaz shifted and felt a cold second skin between her back and her bedsheets. She had woken up in cold sweat. Her face felt damp, her eyes burning, her tongue salty. Around her, the world crumbled. Reality had never been this fragile to her. Gaz was lying on the boundary between sleeping and waking. Her eyes were open, but blind.

Gaz brushed the last remnants of sleep clinging on her lashes. But her life felt like a continuation of her nightmare with the house engulfed in silence and Dib gone. Her tired mind molded dreams into nightmares, nightmares into fears and fears into wishes. She hoped that Dib was safe from harm... or at least any harm worse than she would like to inflict on him.

She glanced at the clock, squinting to make out the numbers in the dark. It was 4:30 am, still too early to wake up. But her heart was pounding too hard for her to stay asleep. She sank her head deeper into the pillow, trying to slow down her heartbeat and breathing rate. Think about the mindless fun of video games. Reaching the dreaded Level 33. Slaying vampire piggies in the castle of briars. Bad, bad vampire piggies.

Almost half an hour passed and Gaz still couldn't sleep. She was much calmer now, but something was missing. Her favourite stuffed toy. She looked down, searching for a fluffy pink ball on the boarded floor, but she couldn't find it. Her Shmee teddy bear had fallen off under her bed.

She leaned over to the edge of her bed and lowered her face to the floor, trying to pick the doll up. Blood came rushing down to her head instantly and brought throbbing pain on the bridge of her nose. Her hands scrambled for her doll and her eyes strayed into the black abyss between the bedframe and the floorboards. She scanned her surroundings for any pink objects, but she later found herself lost in the weave of night. The pain in her head became unbearable. Pounding, pounding, pounding, spinning.

A pale hand shot out from the impenetrable darkness, reaching for her.

She gasped.

With the sound of bones cracking, the hand folded nearly all its fingers, leaving only its forefinger to place softly on its thin lips. She soon saw her as a whole, as a complete creature. _Shhh..._ the creature hissed.

It was only when she blinked that she realised who the creature was.

"Dib?" she asked. Her voice came out one or two pitches higher. "What are you doing here?"

Gaz yanked her head back, still feeling a little disoriented. A thin, worn-out Dib crawled up from the cramped space and climbed into her bed. She inched backwards, trying to make some room for her jaded brother. Gaz couldn't help but to notice the slight changes on Dib's face. His face had faded to white with a muted sheen, deep scratches and blurred edges-like an old photograph.

Usually, she wouldn't like Dib to be this close to her, but tonight, in this condition, after the strange dream, he was forgiven (and exempted from any flesh-eating security robot attacks). There he was, lying perfectly still beside her, his long limbs spilling all over the bedsheets. Streetlight beams filtered through the curtains, revealing his chiaroscuro of emaciated contours and painful gashes. His big head (though not really) rolled lazily to his left, staring at her. Faking a smile.

Tonight, Gaz thought that looking at Dib was like looking into a kaleidoscope, all broken pieces held together by a strong structure. Bones. Muscles, sinews; flesh. But the image formed within was beautiful.

"Gaz," Dib called her, weakly. "I have something to tell you."

"What is it?" she whispered, mimicking his tone.

"I'd discovered the full truth of Zim's latest plan." Dib explained. "Remember the footage I showed you? He'd mentioned something about physical examinations, right? Let me tell you, Zim is collecting the best organs to pass as a human for Skool's physical examination day, so he won't get caught."

Organs. Body parts. Matilda's body. Pete's legs. The boy's tongue. Zita's eyes. Gaz gripped her bedsheets tighter.

"Using his collection of organs, Zim will construct a new body for himself, a la Frankenstein. Since his PAK wasn't compatible with human biology, he had to upload his personality somewhere else for his new body to function normally as him. Once the body was completely assembled, his personality will be downloaded into a memory chip implanted in its brain and it will be alive and fit to replace Zim in all physical examinations."

Dib was hyped up; his voice ecstatic, his honey-brown eyes animated, but his body remained as still as a stone.

"He already had enough experience from last year's organ harvesting incident-darn, getting the handheld game out of your stomach was hard-but GIR broke his harvester, so the organs had to be removed in the traditional way..." Dib winced for a second. "We need to stop him from killing more people, Gaz! Meet me in Zim's underground lab tomorrow. I need your help, only this once, okay?"

Gaz nodded slightly.

The waters in Dib's eyes quivered. "I'm sorry, Gaz." he said under his breath.

"What are you sorry about?"

Dib didn't respond, instead he kept staring at her, drowning into her eyes, taking in every snapshot of her as long as she's still there.

His glazed look filled her with unease. Gaz closed her eyes and waited for him to say something. Or tell her what was wrong with him.

"It's getting late." Dib finally said, diverting Gaz away from the subject. "Go back to sleep."

She shook her head. "I can't."

"Just sleep, Gaz..." Dib's mouth curved into a smirk. "or do you want me to sing you a lullaby?"

"No, Dib, I don't-"

"Lullaby and goodnight, with roses bedight-"

"Dib, your horrible voice fills me with terrible rage. Stop right now-"

"With lilies o'er spread-"

"Stop it, Dib. Or else, I'll add an extra orifice to your face."

"Oh, okay. You won. I'll stop."

"Good."

* * *

Zim's base was a pathetic attempt at being a normal house. It turned out to be rather outlandish with the gargantuan power cables extending from its walls and 'I Love Earth' flag staked into the lawn. But today, it looked even weirder than before. Gaz walked straight towards the door, surprised that nothing even bothered to guard the base and attack her. The lawn gnome guards were rather quiet today. Of course, they were all in burnt bits and pieces, scattered all over the grass. The door wasn't even locked. Where did Zim go?

The living room was a disaster. The walls were riddled with scrapes and holes. The curtains were singed. Unconscious RoboParents fell out of their closets. The television was left turned on, blaring the Angry Monkey Show from its speakers. Something metallic and conical near the television set caught Gaz's attention. She peered down. It was GIR's severed leg.

The trail of destruction continued into Zim's kitchen. There were droplets of human blood and some unknown clear pink liquid on the tiled floor. Cabinet doors were either missing or hanging by a hinge. Broken plates were crunched under her boots. The toilet bowl-elevator had been chipped off here and there. It was still in good working order, however.

Gaz hopped into the toilet bowl.

She studied the elevator, its many buttons and the labels accompanying them. - _1st floor. -2nd floor. -3rd floor. -4th floor, Emergency Diarrhea Pot, or the -5th Floor... etc. etc._ and last but not least, the _DO NOT EVER PUSH THIS BUTTON_ floor. Being Gaz, she did the opposite of what it said. The elevator platform descended deeper into a secret subterranean laboratory. Subdued pink and purple lights trickled through the elevator door.

It was exactly the floor she was looking for.

The laboratory was ominously dark and silent. Only the hum of the ventilation system was heard. The wide mushroom-like canopies above the towering glass containers were fixed with glowing pink bulbs that stared down at her like pairs of watchful eyes. The containers surrounded her like a cage, giving her an immediate sense of isolation from the world above. It would be a claustrophobic experience for some, but not for her. It only felt like a walk in the woods at night.

The real horror lay in the contents of the containers.

Each container was filled to the brim with a strange purple liquid, a preservative of sorts. The first container she saw was labelled 'The Model'. Inside it was a boy, older than her by a year or two. His face was contorted into an eternal grimace, as if in constant agony. His torso had been cut open and suspended in the liquid, each of his visible organs floating around him. It was like looking at a dissected frog in a jar.

The second one housed the body of a girl. She resembled a mermaid more than a test subject, with her lush golden hair and flowing white gown. Gaz knew her too well. The murdered blonde girl was Matilda. Her classmate. She was still as stunning as ever, if not for her missing spine.

The third one was someone Gaz didn't expect. A boy clad in fully in black, except for a blue T-shirt. His spiky black hair hung limp underwater. His glasses floated above his head. His hands were gripping the front of his shirt. All of his body parts were still intact, but there was a huge gaping hole in his chest.

It was Dib, lifeless, his scarred face as pale as ashes.

Pale as ashes.

Ashes.

Bae Yeon-hee in her Silla-styled cremation urn, engraved with creatures from ancient poetry. The word 'Mom' written on the ceramic. Her grayscale picture in a black frame. Professor Membrane lighting the incense.

Gaz tugging on her father's lab coat as he hid his tears behind his goggles.

Dib locking himself in his room for days.

Dark red droplets drifted past Dib's face. Blood is thicker than water.

Gaz fought the heat stinging her eyes and pressed her forehead against the cold glass.

 _Zim will pay._

* * *

At the far end of the laboratory was a room concealed behind a sturdy steel door, but the door had been blasted open by another intruder before Gaz. Her brother, Dib.

Zim was alive and hidden safe in the room. He was crouching over a vast pool of purple liquid, the same liquid used to preserve the bodies of his victims, including Dib. But the pool wasn't filled yet. He was still supplying water to the pool through a cheap garden hose GIR had bought for him from the mart.

Submerged inside the pool was the new body Zim was working on. A chimera of different bodyparts from different peoples, carelessly stitched into one. It was bald and bulbous, bloating at all the wrong places. Its skin was as pale as a cadaver's, populated with colonies of pus and patches of black discolourations. Pieces of its flesh had rotted away, especially on its toes, fingers and armpits, leaving gaping orange cavities behind. Its furred tongue lolled out of its mouth.

Zim's antennae were perked up as he sensed incoming footsteps in his direction. He turned its head towards their source and saw Gaz scowling at him. "Hello, Gaz-human." He pointed to his right and screamed. "Look! LOOK at what the Dib-stink did to GIR!"

A dumbfounded GIR was busy eating a slice of cake. He had lost an arm and a leg, she could tell. Zim had temporarily replaced the missing parts with iron rods.

Gaz sauntered towards Zim. Her round white face was flushed red from rage. "What have you done to my brother?" she hollered.

"Uh, I was preparing him for the Skin Removal Thingy, but his skin was too damaged... So, I guess, I don't need it anymore." Zim waved his gloved hands dismissively. "You can take him back if you want to."

"But he's dead."

"That's the deal!"

 _What deal?_

Zim's nonchalance apalled her.

Gaz's narrow eyes burst open.

She leapt off her feet and pounced at Zim. Her sudden savagery caught him by surprise. He was thrashing and kicking to free himself, but she wrapped her arms tight around him. He couldn't escape this time.

Both of them fell into the pool.

Gaz didn't expect the pool to be this cold. The purple waters took away all warmth from her body. Sharp silvers were digging into every inch of her skin. Her arms and legs felt numb. She felt too weak to stay awake, to stay afloat...

"NOOOOOOO-"

Zim had it worse. He felt his skin tensing, breaking down. The pain was anything beyond his experience as an Invader. Aqueous solutions were his species' weakness. They burn like acid on Irken skin. He let out a bloodcurdling screech as his skin was leaving him in flakes into the water. He saw his skin bubbling, melting, sliding down his arms. Saw his arms partitioned into stringy membranes and blood and bones and flesh-before his eyes wasted away.

In the end, his face began to fall off.

The pool became cloudy with Zim's mortal remains. Gaz couldn't see anything except for the lights above.

She had stopped chasing the light-speckled surface. She wasn't feeling scared at all. It didn't hurt anymore. The pain in her lungs had ceased. From underneath, the fractured purple beams looked almost peaceful.

A faint voice whispered in her ear.

"The more muddy and opaque the water, the more beautiful the lotus flower will be when it emerges. Don't give up."

Yeah, right.

 _Hongryeon had suffered too much._

 _Unable to bear the loneliness and grief of her sister's death, she went to the forest to drown._

* * *

The morning air felt damp and cool. The earth was hard beneath her. There were soft rustling sounds all around. Gently, Gaz lifted her eyelids and saw long grass waving in front of her face, tickling her. A loamy scent, like after-rain fragrance, permeated her senses. She was still alive.

She turned to her right and saw another figure lying in the grass, close beside her. Dib. For the first time in her life, she was actually glad to see him, but her happiness was too fragile to last, and she was left with a hollow feeling when she remembered what had happened. His small chest wasn't moving at all-he wasn't even breathing.

He smiled and a tide of conflicting feelings washed over her. She was both happy and devastated. Felt warm but stricken with cold. Dib had become a mirage, reminding her that everything was broken beyond repair. Her life would never be the same again.

"Why..." Gaz rasped. "Why didn't you tell me that you died?"

"I'm sorry, Gaz." Long grasses swayed behind his translucent face. "I don't know how to break it to you."

"Why did you save me? After everything I've done to you-"

"You're my sister. The only friend I have in this world. And that is enough."

Gaz thought back to the way she'd treated Dib before. If only her ego wasn't that high, she would try to love him right. But everything was too late now.

Maybe there was one last thing she could do.

The red lotus flower unfurled.

"I'm sorry for all those years, Dib." she said.

"You don't have to be sorry about that. It was fine, really." Dib grinned wider. "Just promise me something."

"What is it?"

"That you'll take good care of yourself." Dib extended a fading hand. "Promise?"

Smiling felt foreign to Gaz, but she did it anyway.

"Promise."

Dib curled his hands around hers.

Their fingers didn't touch, but it's okay.


End file.
